


no chance, no way

by pasdexcuses



Category: Joan of Arcadia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Community: trope_bingo, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pasdexcuses/pseuds/pasdexcuses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Frog Prince AU wherein Luke's experiment goes terribly wrong and he gets turned into a frog. Grace has to take care of him but nobody gets to call her the princess in this situation. No dresses will be worn. Seriously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no chance, no way

**Disclaimer:** This work is based on the characters as portrayed in the TV show _Joan of Arcadia_. And, obviously, I’m not making any money from this. Title from “I won’t say I’m in love”.

 

On Thursday, there’s a heated debate waiting for Grace in the Girardi kitchen instead of their usual chemistry study group. She stands by the door. It’s not eavesdropping, Grace just wants to know whether she should run out the door or not. You never know with Girardi.

“Maybe you have to do more,” Joan Girardi says, and by the sounds of it, she’s mildly horrified.

“This is science,” Friedman says. Grace doesn’t need to be looking to know Girardi is glaring at him.

It’s then that curiosity gets the best of her. And just as Grace walks in, Rove says, “Maybe it just doesn’t work with Glynis.”

She considers backtracking but Joan Girardi has already seen her. Grace exhales loudly, like a deflating balloon. No point in pretending she can just go. She walks closer to where everyone is huddled up around the table. There’s a frog on it, green, a bit on the scrawny side and with a weird pattern around its eyes that makes it seem as though it’s wearing glasses.

“Where’d you get the frog?” Grace asks.

“There were some miscalculations in—” Friedman starts but Girardi stops him.

“Something exploded and Luke turned himself into a frog,” she explains. Then adds, “Trust me, _I know_.”

“Okay, then,” Grace says, already turning on her heels to make her way out.

How, after that, Grace gets roped into being frog-Girardi’s new caretaker is beyond her. Really, she should’ve run when she had the chance.

 

If asked for an ideal caregiver, no one would come up with Grace Polk. There’s a reason for that that no one in Girardi’s kitchen seems to understand. But no one wants frog-Girardi poking around Rove’s art collection, where he would definitely be a danger to himself and others. Then Glynis isn’t allowed any kinds of pets, and Friedman says he can’t keep a frog around, what will the ladies says. Grace asks, what ladies, which makes Friedman glare but he still won’t take the frog.

And Girardi. Well, neither female Girardi nor frog-Girardi want him to stay home — Grace can infer as much about the frog because he gets this horrified look on his face that’d be pretty hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that it’s a frog, who’s also Luke. Apparently, Mr Girardi has a thing for Italian frog legs, which is disgusting, in Grace’s opinion. But no one’s gonna believe Joan if she says they can’t eat her frog because it’s actually her brother. Her parents will finally cave and have her committed for life.

So it’s up to Grace to suck it up and take the frog home with her. She bitches about it as she takes the slimy frog in her hands and carries it home. It’s a terrible idea but even Grace doesn’t realize how terrible it actually is until she’s standing on her own doorstep. She hates Girardi.

Grace takes a deep breath. She brings the frog up to her eye level so she can stare straight into the frog’s eyes and say, “Listen, Girardi.” She points a finger at him, for good measure. “If you so much as touch _any_ part of my body, I will make it my mission to have Lischak start earlier on dissection and offer you as her first subject.”

Once the frog looks rightly terrified, she hides him in her jacket, throws the door open, rushes past the living room and upstairs, avoiding both of her parents. With her bedroom door closed, Grace sets Luke on top of a pile of textbooks she never reads.

“And I thought your sister was the weird one,” Grace says to the frog.

 

Grace takes her usual spot in Lischak’s class, gets out her books and doesn’t even blink when the frog hops out of her bag. It’s been a long weekend.

“Why did you bring him here?” Girardi hisses. “Ms Lischak will—”

“He hoped into my bag with full knowledge I had Lischak today,” Grace replies. She has a pen in her hand she doesn’t plan on using because she has never taken notes and is not about to start now. “Don’t go around blaming me if your brother can’t take a day’s rest to wallow in self pity and frogness.”

Girardi turns to whisper-yell at frog-Girardi as Rove leans across the table. “I found this guy online last night who said the same thing happened to him,” he says.

“And?”

“And when his girlfriend kissed him he went back to normal.”

“Yeah but kissing Glynis didn’t work, remember?” Girardi says, a little exasperated. Grace can relate.

As it is, she’s having trouble not rolling her eyes. But then Rove looks around himself. Friedman and Glynis are nowhere to be seen.

So Rove says, “Yeah, but you don’t really love Glynis, do you, Luke?”

Grace is about to tell Rove to stop being ridiculous when she looks down at frog-Girardi. Frog-Girardi is definitely avoiding everyone’s eyes.

Grace’s jaw drops, and all she can say is, “Dude.”

 

Grace doesn’t make frog-Girardi discuss the whole Glynis thing. First of all, he’s a frog. Second, the frog’s sexual preferences are none of Grace’s business. Third, she has more immediate worries right now.

After a few days of a rigorous crackers-and-lettuce diet, frog-Girardi starts looking sick. She has to look up online what frogs eat. Upon finding out, she opts out of getting alive insects and drags herself to the local pet store. The guy gives her a concentrate made of something she doesn’t even wanna know.

While the guy goes to the back of the store — frogs are not very popular pets, nowadays — Grace takes the chance to poke around. She feels uncomfortable when she picks up a small, plastic cage. Some serious freedom principles are being betrayed right now. But there are only so many times Grace can stand having frog-Girardi under her jacket before she goes female-Girardi-insane. She pays for all of it, making a note of passing the bill over to Girardi so she can be fully reimbursed for all her troubles.

Grace and the frog develop a routine after that. In the mornings, she leaves food for him while she goes to take a shower, bringing a change of clothes with her because no way is frog-Girardi seeing her naked. Then Grace has breakfast, opens the top of the cage, waits for frog-Girardi to jump in so she can put him in her bag. Every time, she rushes out the door to catch the bus to go school. The frog doesn’t say anything about them always being early.

And when frog-Girardi wants her attention, he jumps. And when he wants to read a book he jumps on top of it until Grace takes it to start flipping pages until a tongue on a page stops her. She still thinks the tongue is quite gross but she gets the feeling that that’s about the only fun frog-Girardi is having.

It’s their second week at it. Girardi has reached new levels of insanity, Freidman has resorted to asking Lischak weird and enigmatic questions about frogs, while Glynis stares at frog-Girardi longingly. Rove keeps staring between her and the frog, frowning like they’re some chemical equation he can’t figure out.

Grace is the only one who’s not worried. She knows the frog will figure out something, isn’t he the nerd in the family. And she must have said that last part out loud because next thing she knows, a tongue is slapping her arm. “Gross, Girardi,” Grace says, glaring at the frog. “Keep your slimy tongue to yourself or I’ll throw you out the window.”

Frog-Girardi looks away, and Grace thinks he’d be blushing if he weren’t a frog. She smiles and gets this urge to pat the green skin.

She shakes her head. _Get it together, Polk_.

 

Free period finds Grace lying on her back under a tree. Her somewhat pale complexion would suggest otherwise, but Grace actually likes being outside. Today has been unnaturally sunny for early spring. The light filters through the leaves, and the weather is warm but not too warm. It’s nice, she thinks, plus, right now, she doesn’t have to share her personal space with anyone, human or frog. She closes her eyes, clears her mind.

It’s then when someone calls her name. She opens one of her eyes to see Rove taking the grass beside her. They used to do this when they were kids but Rove hasn’t been an outside person ever since his mother. She sits up.

“Where’s Luke?” Rove asks, leaning against the tree.

Grace shrugs. “We decided free period will actually be _free_ period.”

“We?” Rove asks, mouth quirking up.

“Well, I decided, and he can’t speak so he can’t complain.” She pauses. Then, “Where’s the other Girardi?”

“Joan? She said she had to run do something.”

“Doesn’t she always?”

Rove smiles, something small and unguarded. “Yeah,” he says. “She’s… yeah.”

Some times, Grace can admit to herself that she’s a bit envious of Rove and Girardi. Not that she’d ever say that out loud.

She clears her throat because Rove seems like he’s lost in his own thoughts, probably about Girardi.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Rove says next. “I was actually looking for you.”

“Well, you found me.”

“Yeah, it’s about Luke.” Grace raises an eyebrow at him. “I think you should kiss him.”

She blinks at him, waits a few seconds in case she heard wrong.

“ _What_?” She manages to get her inflection just right so Rove knows his next words could very well be his last.

Rove shrugs. “He liked you before he started dating Glynis.”

“No,” Grace says. She stands up and uses the benefit of height to glare down at Rove properly. “No, I am not kissing any Girardis.”

She stomps back into the main building, wishing she could home and be alone. But she knows she has to go look for Luke.

 

The following days, Grace tries and fails miserably at not thinking about what Rove said.

Luke and her make no sense. He’s all brains and good behavior, and she isn’t about those things. It doesn’t matter that, when Glynis and Luke got together, Grace wasn’t too thrilled about it. It doesn’t matter that, on very rare occasions, she craves what Rove and Girardi have. Those are very rare occasions. Grace isn’t cut for relationships. She isn’t cut for the kind of settlement those imply.

Later that week, Rove asks her if it’s because of Girardi, what she will say. Since when has Grace cared about anything anyone says?

No, this has nothing to do with other Girardis or what her moronic peers would think. This is about Grace. And Grace doesn’t believe in true love or any of that princess shit.

 

Grace doesn’t believe in true love or princess or magic kisses. But it’s been almost a month, and all the frog-moping is starting to bring her down.

Grace has never been a particularly happy person. She has always been wary of excess. Which doesn’t mean she likes misery, either. She stares at frog-Girardi sometimes, tries to figure out what’s going on in his mind. It’s useless. All she knows is the frog is sad.

A part of her, the part that still loves her mom, the part that still has faith, that part of Grace that she tries to hide, well, that part wants to at least try.

She thinks about it for days. In the end, Grace manages to convince herself; it’ll probably never work. And if it does, well then that’s Luke’s problem and not hers.

 

The sun is going down, and the sky is the right shade of blood oranges.

She puts the frog on the bed because if this works then she doesn’t want her hands to be crushed under human-Girardi’s weight. Grace had read online about that. It had taken her a while but she finally found a forum where someone had the guts of telling the whole story, with all its gruesome details. That’s where she got the idea of asking Rove for a change of clothes.

She sets the frog on the bed and braces herself. Grace squares her shoulders, closes her eyes. She’s so close, she only has to lean forward to press her lips to the frog’s mouth. It tastes like the concentrate Grace’s been feeding him.

For a moment, nothing happens. Her heart rate slows down in disappointment, which makes her feel something tight in her chest because. Well, because maybe she wanted this to work, too.

But when she takes a few steps back and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, the color on frog-Girardi starts changing. It gets a little pink, and, slowly, the frog starts changing again, growing bigger, until it’s Luke who’s on her bed.

“Dude,” Grace says, looking away. She can feel her cheeks are pinking. “You’re naked.”

“Oh,” is all Luke says. Then, “Oh my god.”

There are sounds of Luke scrambling for something to cover himself, and Grace lets him suffer for a minute before she tells him there are clothes in her bag. She catches a glimpse of Luke’s perfectly not-green ass when she turns around again.

“Where’d you get these?” Luke asks, staring down at a shirt that’s slightly oversized and entirely not his style.

She covers her mouth not to laugh.

“I asked Rove for them,” she explains. “In case this worked.”

“Oh,” Luke says. “So, um.”

“If you tell anyone it worked, I will murder you in your sleep.”

“Right.”

“But I’m glad you’re back,” she says, and takes a step toward him, not knowing why.

Luke nods, takes a step himself. He replies, “I’m glad it worked.”

“Yeah,” Grace finds herself saying.

“So, uh,” Luke tries, taking another step.

For once, Grace has no words.

She nods, lets Luke place his hands on the sides of her face. She closes her eyes again. Luke still tastes of that awful concentrate but he has proper lips and a regular tongue and his hands aren’t slimy. They’re warm.


End file.
